For more than a decade, I have been obsessed with one personal mission – Finding Naoko. Armed with my trusted Leica rangefinder and mostly the standard 50mm lens, I have traversed the globe, going from one city to another in search of the elusive woman. Just exactly who is she? Do I even know how she looks like? Will I know it if I really meet her? Perhaps I don’t really want to succeed, for what we can’t find is always the most beautiful.

When Mom was waiting to be discharged from the ward during one of her earliest hospital stays, a nurse asked Mom whether she would miss her. Mom replied, “I won’t miss you, but I will remember you.”

Few people understood what she really meant with that but I knew she said that because she didn’t want to go back to the hospital and if she had said that she missed the nurses, she feared that she would return. So while she didn’t go to school, Mom learned enough English to be able to communicate, and in this case, very clearly.

This is my little tribute to a warrior, a braveheart, a comedian, and my dearest Mom.